1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques to enhance the quality of streaming audio, and techniques to manage such enhancements.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, streaming of audio via the Internet is beginning to overtake radio in popularity as a method for distributing information and entertainment. At present, the formats used for Internet-based distribution of audio are limited to single-channel monaural and conventional two-channel stereo. Efficient transmission usually requires the audio signal to be highly compressed to accommodate the limited bandwidth available. For this reason the received audio is often of mediocre or poor quality.
Due to bandwidth limitations it is difficult to transmit more than two channels of audio in real time via the Internet while maintaining audio integrity. In order to effectively transmit more than two channels of audio over the Internet, multi-channel audio (typically meaning audio sources having two stereo channels plus one or more surround channels) must be encoded or otherwise represented by the two channels being transmitted. The two channels may then be converted into a data stream for Internet delivery using one of many Internet compression schemes (e.g., mp3, etc). Systems that permit transmission of multi-channel audio over traditional two-channel transmission media have significant limitations, which make them unsuitable for Internet transmission of encoded multi-channel audio. For example, systems such as Dolby Surround/ProLogic are limited by: (i) their source compatibility requirements, making the audio delivery technique dependent upon a particular encoding or decoding scheme; (ii) the number of channels available in the multi-channel format that can be represented by the two channels; and (iii) in the audio quality of the surround channels. Additionally, existing digital transmission and recording systems such as DTS and AC3 require too much bandwidth to operate effectively in the Internet environment.